New(ish) Paper on DCT and the Euthyphro Dilemma

John Milliken, "Euthyphro, the Good, and the Right", Philosophia Christi 11:1 (2009), 149-159.Abstract: The Euthyphro dilemma is widely deployed as an argument against theistic accounts of ethics. The argument proceeds by trying to derive strongly counterintuitive implications from the view that God is the source of morality. I argue here that a general crudeness with which both the dilemma and its theistic targets are described accounts for the seeming force of the argument. Proper attention to details, among them the distinction between the good and the right, reveals that a nuanced theism is quite unscathed by it.P.S., Note well the concessions made in fn. 27 (though of course Robert Adams has made them as well in his Finite and Infinite Goods). The defense of DCT thus comes at the expense of denying that morality is essentially dependent upon God (at least on a Finean analysis of essence).